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Mark Ruffalo on his smashing new role in The Avengers

“I gave myself a treat today,” Mark Ruffalo says with a guilty grin about the poutine lunch he’s just polished off. “Now I’ve got a bit of a stomach ache.”

Hulk got gas?

Ruffalo laughs. He’s used to the jokes about playing Dr. Bruce Banner in The Avengers, opening today, the brilliant but emotionally tortured scientist who messed with gamma rays and now morphs into the big green terror known as Hulk whenever he experiences strong emotions — especially anger.

It’s been a busy time for Ruffalo, a rumpled-looking, easygoing sort who is not only one of Hollywood’s most talented actors; he’s one of the industry’s most beloved pros. The Oscar nominee for The Kids are All Right just finished shooting a heist flick about magicians, Now You See Me, in Paris in April and then kicked off a worldwide promotional swing for The Avengers that brought him to Toronto Monday.

“I’ve spent two nights in the past four months in my own bed, which sucks,” said 44-year-old Ruffalo, a married father of three young kids.

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But Ruffalo is also clearly excited about playing Banner/Hulk and his compellingly tormented, often-amusing performance is a highlight of the Marvel Comics’ blockbuster. His performance stands head and shoulders above previous Hulksters Eric Bana (2003’s Hulk) and Edward Norton (2008’s The Incredible Hulk) and even Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno’s 1978-1982 TV series take on the character.

“I adored the TV show,” said Ruffalo. “That was my favourite thing as a kid and I felt like (The Avengers) is a continuum of the last time we saw Hulk, but with the added slant of leaning toward Bill Bixby’s (version) which is the more true version. He’s been on the run longer. He’s tired. He’s tortured.”

He and Avengers writer-director Joss Whedon crafted a new back story for Banner, including Ruffalo’s idea to have him working as a physician in the slums of Calcutta when he’s called up for Avengers world-saving service.

“We decided he goes to a leprosy colony where there’s so much suffering he couldn’t possibly get angry; he couldn’t possibly find anything wrong with his own life. He’s just in service to people,” explained Ruffalo.

He and Whedon also talked about being in their mid-40s and how Banner would be around that age, too. A Hulk-sized mid-life crisis? Not really, laughed Ruffalo.

“But it is like, ‘Hey, this is who I am and this is what I will be all my life,’” Ruffalo figured Hulk was saying to himself. “He’s thinking, ‘I understand my mortality.’ I think he’s tired of running and he’s developed a sense of humour about his situation in the midst of the world weariness.”

Banner is so afraid of his alter-ego’s reappearance after he’s conscripted by S.H.I.E.L.D. boss Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to help the Avengers superhero crew save the world that he only calls him “the other guy,” never “Hulk.”

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Unlike other Avengers Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Captain America (Chris Evans), Ruffalo is new to his character. And he certainly wasn’t a lock for the role. Not only did legions of franchise fans doubt his ability to play Hulk, Ruffalo did, too.

“This is another turn that nobody expected of me that nobody thought I could do,” he said. “There was a lot of resistance to me in this part at first from the geekiverse and a lot of resistance inside myself and that’s always been a good indicator to me” that he should take a role, he said.

“Doing something so big, not knowing if I can do it. Can I pull this off? Can I do what I do in smaller movies in a big movie?”

He even tried to talk Whedon out of hiring him, but found the writer-director “very persistent.” Once cast, the first person Ruffalo went to for advice was Downey Jr., his co-star in the 2007 crime thriller Zodiac.

“I called Robert and he sort of paved the way,” he said. “What he did with Iron Man was just reinventing the genre, and made it possible for an actor like me to fit into this world.”

Ruffalo said he found the most daunting aspect of the role — working with CGI for the first time to bring Hulk to life — ended up being the most rewarding.

“I did the man-cancelling leotard with the leads on my face and the ping pong balls on the suit and it was totally humiliating,” he laughed. “But what I found out once I got over the sheer humiliation and terror was all the years I’d spend working in theatre . . . really worked well.”

Ruffalo is the first actor to play both Banner and Hulk. His face is recognizable on the CGI-generated monster and it’s something he enjoyed so much it’s been reported he’s signing on for as many as six more outings as Banner/Hulk, including his own solo film.

“I was just so thrilled,” he said of seeing himself transformed onscreen. “I was doing it on a set by myself, no actors to play off, doing all these scenes on my own. Banner has been done and been done really well before but nobody had done the Hulk yet. The technology wasn’t there to make him feel real, to make him have real human rage. I was like, this is an incredibly freeing technology for an actor. I don’t have to wear prosthetics. It’s my face.

“It’s a whole new world that really got to me. I can be anything. Talk about disappearing into a role.”

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